The Jordan Rules

The Jordan Rules (1992), a nonfiction book by journalist Sam Smith about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls' 1990-21 championship season, caused controversy over a number of the claims alleged in the book. It became a New York Times bestseller.

The Jordan Rules is a key text in the evolution of Michael Jordan's image from a can-do-no-wrong paragon of accomplishment and sportsmanship among athletes, to the prickly and mean provocateur who, according to Smith, rarely spoke to his teammates except to taunt them. In a twenty-five-year retrospective on The Jordan Rules on the sports website The Ringer, Bryan Curtis says the book characterizes Jordan as what we would call in today's modern parlance, a "troll."

For example, early on in the season in November 1990, the Bulls lose a matchup against the Golden State Warriors that they were heavily favored to win. Smith relates how, upon arriving in Oakland for the game, Jordan and his players learn that James Worthy of the Los Angeles Lakers has just been arrested for hiring two prostitutes. One of the Bulls players quips, "You'd think he'd have been tired of being double-teamed by now."



After the loss, during which Jordan attempted an uncharacteristically low twelve shots, he kicks a chair in the locker room, lamenting head coach Phil Jackson's triangle offense, which he believes is a retaliatory effort by Jackson to "de-Michaelize" the team, depriving Jordan of the season scoring title. The following day, the Bulls have a practice in Seattle ahead of a matchup against Gary Payton and the Seattle Supersonics. According to teammate Horace Grant, Jordan doesn't say a word to anybody during practice and attempts only a shot or two in his own retaliatory effort to infuriate Jackson.

The night before the game at a club, both Payton and Jordan are in attendance. The big-talking rookie Payton taunts Jordan by bragging about how much money he makes and all the expensive Ferraris and Testarossa cars he buys with it. Jordan issues a devastating comeback: "No problem. I get them for free."

Even more devastating is Jordan's response to Payton on the court during the Bulls-Sonics matchup. During Payton's first two possessions, Jordan easily strips him of the ball. So thorough is Jordan's neutralization of Payton that the young Sonics rookie is taken out of the game prematurely. For Jordan's part, he looks on his way to a masterful scoring performance. However, to get back at Jordan for acting like a petulant brat during practice, Jackson removes Jordan from the game. The point of these early passages is to illustrate how distant the reality of Jordan as a person—petty, even cruel—is to the image cultivated by Jordan and his sponsors in the media.



One of the more controversial claims in the book surrounds allegations that Jordan punched teammate Will Perdue twice during a practice that season. Tensions between Jordan and Perdue were known to the team early on. For example, Jordan mocked the center for his apparent laziness, nicknaming him "Will Vanderbilt," because "he doesn't deserve to be named after a Big Ten school." The altercation in question occurred one day during practice—not because Perdue was playing below Jordan's impossibly high standards but, ironically, for the opposite reason. Perdue executed a defensive move against Jordan known as a screen in a strikingly effective manner—a surprise to Jordan. Jordan then punched Perdue in the face twice saying, "Why the hell don't you ever set a pick like that in a game?"

Although the term originated from the defensive scheme the Detroit Pistons would use in their attempts to thwart Jordan, "The Jordan Rules" adopted a double meaning: It came to refer to the special privileges Jordan enjoyed because of his stature as the league's most talented and popular player. But while much of the book reads like a condemnation of Jordan's character, the author's thesis is that for the Bulls to win the title that year, Jordan would need to learn to be less selfish—and that's exactly what he did, most pointedly during Game 5 of the 1992 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers.

With little time left in the game, the Bulls only led by two points. The Bulls had possession of the ball, and under normal circumstances, Jordan would take it upon himself to take whatever shots remained during the game, carrying the team's fate on his shoulders. However, during a time-out late in the game, coach Phil Jackson confronted Jordan about his selfishness. Jordan must have gotten the message, Smith writes, because instead of taking a shot himself on the ensuing possession, Jordan found teammate John Paxson open in the corner. The Bulls won the game. Moreover, the more Jordan seemed to embrace Jackson's triangle offense, the more games his team won.



In retrospect, much of The Jordan Rules isn't really controversial. It is common knowledge among even casual basketball fans today that Michael Jordan the human was much more prickly than Michael Jordan the brand ambassador. Nevertheless, at the time, it was a groundbreaking work that shifted popular conceptions of the world's most dominant athlete.